How to make your own 3D coins in Photoshop

Pixel Perfect is the "perfect" show to help you with your Photoshop skills. Be amazed and learn as master digital artist Bert Monroy takes a stylus and a digital pad and treats it as Monet and Picasso do with oil and canvas. Learn the tips and tricks you need to whip those digital pictures into shape with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. In this episode, Ben shows you how to make your own 3D coins in Photoshop.

Learn to make your own money in Photoshop! Bert teaches you how to make coins by applying textures to a 3D cylinder object.

Gather your materials:
The first step of making a 3D coin in Photoshop is to get an image of the front and back side of the coin. You can use a scanner to capture both sides of a quarter at 300 dpi. When you have the image, use the marquee tool to copy and paste each side into a new file.

Make a 3D replica of the coin:
Create a grey 3D cylinder in your original image file by choosing 3D > New Shape from Layer > Cylinder. Shrink the cylinder's height using the 3D controls that exist in your image canvas so that the shape looks similar to a quarter. Then, rotate and scale the diameter to match the size of the coins in your scan. You no longer need your original image, and you can fill the background with white.

Then, apply textures to different parts of the 3D object, create ribbing texture for the cylinder material, and apply lighting to the 3D coin.

Search Pixel Perfect on WonderHowTo for more Photoshop episodes from this Revision3 show.